Microsoft keen on cloud computing centers in India
DELHI -- Microsoft Corporation is discussing setting up cloud computing centers in Tamil Nadu. Executives from the software company had a meeting with the southern state’s Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.
Jean Philippe Courtois, head of Microsoft International, told Jayalalithaa that these centers will serve as a “Centre of Excellence in cloud computing,” according to her office. They also discussed investing in education and e governance.
Spending on public and private IT cloud services could generate 15 million jobs worldwide by 2015, according to a recent study commissioned by Microsoft. Nearly 50% of these will be in small and medium-sized businesses. By 2015, business revenues from IT innovation enabled by the cloud could reach $1.1 trillion a year.
"Perhaps the biggest transformation affecting technology today is the transition to the cloud from the previous client-server computing mode," writes Robert Youngjohns, president of Microsoft, North America in a blog about cloud creating U.S. jobs. "The cloud gives businesses efficient ways to reduce IT costs and invest in broad innovation, creating economic growth and new job opportunities." The U.S. had 62 percent of global spending for public IT cloud services in 2011.
The study also said that the highest percentage of new jobs will occur in emerging markets like China and India, which together could produce 6.8 million jobs by 2015. This was attributed to the large workforce of 1.2 billion people in these countries. North America is expected to produce about 1.17 jobs (read full report here).
The study described public and private cloud computing as ranging—“from the use of third-party resources to store data to delivery of IT services within an enterprise based on virtualized infrastructure, self configuration, and automated provisioning.”
“We tend to think of China and India as emerging markets, but they’re actually early adopters of the cloud,” said John Gantz from the International Data Commission, who wrote the paper. “They’re not bound to existing systems. They’ve skipped that step, so there’s less holding them back.”
The report said the Asia-Pacific region accounts for 12% of public IT cloud services worldwide. Another reason for job creation is attributed to infrastructure challenges that will help spur investment in private IT cloud services.
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com